Malcolm Gladwell w/ Prof. Adam Grant: Authors@Wharton - Talking To Strangers 

I loved this interview! Malcolm proves to be highly evolved with his communication style in that he stays so emotionally non reactive to Adam’s sarcastic provocations. It’s highly entertaining and also academic. Rarely anymore can we see truly thoughtful and diverse people having conversations and debate without heavy emotional reactivity! While many of us aren’t steeped in the knowledge or studies discussed, I was able to follow and understand the discussion. And it makes me want to delve more into these topics. loved!!

There are three kinds of Inconsistency: • Inconsistency that comes from a lack of Integrity (e.g. Pathological Liars). • Inconsistency that comes from an abundance of Integrity (e.g. Scientists incrementally updating knowledge). • Inconsistency that comes from the fact that almost all things in the Universe are a spectrum and rarely binary in nature (e.g. Quantum Mechanics, Nature).

There is a history to these interviews. To truly enjoy them you need to check out Malcolm Interviewing Adam about Originals and their other interviews. They are probably two of the smartest men I have listened to and truly enjoy their intellectual sparring.

I love Malcolm’s podcast and books. I really enjoy the questions he poses and his theories. Adam is kind of obnoxious throughout this but it was interesting to see him challenge Malcolm and have Malcolm defend/explain his thoughts more throughly. So this was enjoyable and I like Malcolm even more now.

Grant is really fast on his feet, but needlessly autocontrarian. You brought Gladwell in, let him tell his story.

The host is so proud of himself. good for him. Malcolm Gladwell is such a great speaker.

Such an interesting conversation to watch! The two look like childhood buddies, who do research on quite different things but Adam has (as the moderator), caught up with his friend's research and the two are having this fun conversational discussion, challenging each other intellectually on their beliefs and explore new stuff. This is quite similar to how I would catch up with my buddies.

Loved these two...they made me think, they made me laugh...reminds me of all those friendly arguments of my youth.

I think Malcolm is brilliant with his responses. Very spot on and articulate with the ideas in his book. I enjoy listening to him and will start reading his books now. Cheers Malcolm and Adam

This conversation was absolutely great. I just love Malcom Gladwell.

The world doesn't need more smart people we need more compassionate generous people!

Malcolm is so smart with a good sense of humor topped with compassion. That's why I'm voting for Bernie Sanders!

I am so grateful to be able to see a good RU-vid like this

You need to chill, people. Grant and Malcolm are thinkers who love (and, interestingly and arguably, find it satisfying) to disagree and understand each others' perspective on certain things. It's very obvious in this interview and in another interview I've watched. Here, Grant explicitly pointed out that Malcolm wanted him to talk about topics where they have disagreements than just focusing on the book. No need to take it against Grant. The conversation was great!

Brilliantly done. A good example for one to engage in conversations that offers a healthy exchange of ideas. With some playful humor. I loved it from beginning to end. Would have loved more. So entertaining and educational. Yes indeed refuges are facing despair. Thank you.

This is so wonderful. I've listened many times. Two of my fav ppl.

These two need to take their act on the road. Their comedic timing is killer.

My god Malcolm Gladwell is smart. He had such a great argument for comparing Harward university with a hedge fund.

I lived 22 years in Japan. I think I learnt a lot on the 5th year, the 7th year and the 12th year of living there. I had learnt enough by the 15th year and on the 18th year I decided to immigrate back to my country of birth... now I feel like an immigrant in my own country... I feel like the constant immigrant.

1:02:00. Value of student feedback. Loved the way Gladwell pivoted when Adam miss understood his question on the value of student feedback as being from a personal perspective when it was framed as from a research data perspective. He really saved the conversation from what would undoubtedly have been a fumbling re-centering.

Adam, your opinions are defined by your privilege up bringing. There are many intelligent people who have not seen success.

This is brilliant! Absolutely love it 😍 Finally someone got Malcolm to be human and empathy his knowledge in a very funny way

Well, when I read Outliers, I got out of it that, there are a variety of factors that go into how successful we are, most not in our control. A lot of it is luck, genetics, circumstances.

Two of the greatest thinkers of our time! I enjoyed both them here and as authors!

Loud it Malcolm!! @ 26:40 Till all the HR professionals in the world hear it. They get paid tens of thousands to compare the universities people graduate from and then they pat themselves at the back of the head for a job well done but none of them can boldly say they will spot the next Steve Jobs if he walked into their interview room.

Agreed on the logic that we’re continually learning and improving our ways of thinking and making arguments

Malcolm's such a good interviewer. He's so good, it's makes it lame when he's on the opposite role. Not him, but whoever is hosting him. Even if it's good, it just feels weak.

This was so refreshing. Reminds me of a young vibrant America.

'I just want some standardized something.' This is from a professor. I know it's partially in jest, but the problem Malcolm Gladwell raises about the need for speed in the LSAT should be well taken. What matters more; the quality of the reasoning process or the speed? Perhaps speed of thought follows from an educated high quality reasoning process and that the opposite does not in fact follow. We don't know because we have not tested this, ie, we haven't passed cohorts of law students who have been admitted on the basis of a test that tests quality of reasoning process irregardless of speed.

Dogs show A LOT of emotions, including complex desires, but humans rarely LOOK, in the same way parents rarely really LOOK at their kids faces, and thus why so many humans repress their expressions over time, but others, with attentive parents, might not. Some children, paradoxically do the opposite: amplify their expression and become MORE dramatic as a strategy to get the attention they are lacking. Divas, for example, represent an extreme version of this and can be created either from too much doting, or not enough attention in childhood. Children also watch adults carefully to figure out EVERYTHING, including how to express their feelings on their face. So we have these very complex social and cultural impacts. This is true for dogs as well. It's hard to tell what's genetic and what's just been passed on and on and on for a long time. Smiles on humans used to be "I'm anxious," and still do, probably most of the time. But they have also morphed into genuine delight as well. A similar, but slightly different variation of this morphing has been passed on to other primates as well, but less strongly. How much of that is genetic? How much of that is just learned? Babies definitely smile even more freely in response to joy than adults do, which is a shockingly strong effect I don't think exists in other primates. It's distinctly human. That's probably genetic, but how can you tell since smiling parents are more likely to have a smiling baby? The smiling baby might have seen their smile as THE ONE OF THE VERY FIRST THINGS THEY EVER SAW after birth, thus combined with the strong instinct to imprint on parents, this triggers a particularly strong and vivid consciousness of the moment, followed by a particularly strong and vivid memory of it, which then trickles into all the other parts of their brain. (Which is why it is so crucial a mother is immediately handed her baby after birth so that the very first thing the child sees is her smile, and hopefully the smile of their father as well--it ends up impacting every thing else that develops in the brain afterward, as the brain develops like a fractal, building new concepts out of relating them to old ones. Smile to your baby as early and often as possible!) So it's really hard to tell if this human penchant for joy smiling is genetic or culturally developmentally. If there exists a single human tribe that doesn't joy smile, that would still not settle the issue, since humans are suspected of having a VERY RECENT set of SHARED COMMON ANCESTORS (some suggest as early as 500-3000 years ago, but I suspect it's more like 10,000). At any rate, humans all around the world are very very very very recent cousins, with very little genetic time having passed since divergence, and thus why we can all mate and produce hybrid vigor babies, mostly. If we had diverged further, our mixed babies would eventually pass a threshold where they were less viable, not more (speciation). We are SUPER RECENTLY related, and race is mostly an illusion, or rather severely hyperbolized compared to its actual state of divergence. At any rate, it's a mystery why we do so much of what we do. I suspect it's a hell of a lot less genetic for a wide range of species-specific traits than people realize, because of this imprinting aspect. I call this the *Imprint-Culture Bias* and I argue that it produces this illusion that things are more genetic than they are. It's a bias of which I believe we should become more aware in the sciences. Intelligence vs. Conscientiousness is, I believe, a perfect example of this bias. People keep saying, "intelligence is genetic," and "it predicts your success." I think this is mostly incorrect. Intelligence is developmental and involves nutrition, and the conscientiousness of the parents and social structure of the child. Humans that are conscientious have a higher chance of passing that onto their children through a combination of modeling conscientiousness, but perhaps more importantly, because they INTENTIONALLY MODEL OTHER QUALITIES more effectively as well, and have a great amount of APPLIED KNOWLEDGE in their parenting. An example is that parents who know that 10 hours of sleep is better than 8 by a large margin for the integration of knowledge are far more likely to raise successful children with healthier brains that stay healthier longer into life, thus creating higher intelligence and other success markers. They simultaneously have modeled this tradition to their children who then go on to become parents themselves and pass on the 10 hours sleep rule, instead of the 99% of the population that follows the 8 hour sleep rule. Since they are aware of such little "tricks for getting ahead in the world", and pass them on in the parenting style, it appears to be genetic, because *we wrongly assume inheritance = genetics.* This is why identical twin studies where the twins have been adopted out to different cultures are necessary, but I doubt we have big datasets for such subtle issues as these and adoptive parents tend to be more affluent and committed than average (especially when you consider how many people have kids almost by biological default). Long chains of inheritance of success traits can occur that APPEAR genetic, but don't have to be in your DNA, and probably mostly aren't. And Intelligence, most crucially, is probably largely limited by anxiety in people who would have been conscientious but are neurotic instead. It's harder to do well on an IQ test when you are distracted after all. And it's likewise difficult to go through life consistently performing well when you are frequently interrupted by distracting thoughts and emotions that come with neuroticism. So a great deal of human intelligence is LOST or BLOCKED by processes that might not block other areas of your life as much. A great example most American's can connect to is Post Traumatic Math Disorder. Most people think they "hate math" because they have been lead to believe that math is painful. That's clearly a product of our teaching, and it's a failure of imagination to think that there does not exist some optimized potential curriculum that is designed to make mathematics addictingly fun for a wider range of students. Of course there is! But it's not what we use (yet). Thus, for most brains, the avoidance of pain dictates that they do not develop mathematics circuits in the neural net. And so you get this effect that appears to be genetic intelligence, but indeed, it could INTERPLAY with real genetic factors. But that doesn't mean you can't break past it if you had a better developmental system. So for example, if we really wanted to, and were smart enough to figure out how, we could take a country that traditionally "isn't good at" some academic pursuit, and change that just by figuring out the rubik's cube of how we develop the children. And all of this is before we even consider Microbiotics, which are proving to have a greater affect on the development of minds than we previously would have guessed in our wild imagination. Your microbiome is largely dictated by sensual contact, a developmental issue, but one so strongly linked to your mother, that even with identical twins, we should be suspicious of what the bacteria and fungi are doing to trick us into thinking it's DNA. How many other similar factors have we not yet realized are happening that are not DNA based? and may even be alterable ?

A role model for an intelligent, intelligible, and appealing conversation.

Wow what an interesting conversation is this & this man

Having recently been involved in a lengthy trial, I would say that Malcolm Gladwell's idea of a test of physical stamina is a VERY good idea for lawyers, Very much enjoyed his ideas, The other guy was just tedious. Felt sorry for his students.

I don’t think I’ve learned anything. It’s just an enjoyment to see two smart people having a conversation

Love Malcom Gladwell❤ this interviewer however...

Understanding how the individual fits into the we and the real meaning of "We the people" - comes down to teaching civics. And making that a subject you get graded on at school would be very helpful. And sadly we don't have this... but for a reason... people with money and power don't want a society that understands civics and the mechanisms for changing institutions. They want a society that is distracted and fearful of change...

Two high IQs speaking & making fun of each other. Malcolm is calm and articulative, Adam is direct & very fast. This is awesome.

What??? Why is the interviewer making Gladwells books about him. Totally agree with Gladwell @ 1:01.

My quick slight correction #ummactually is folks have gotten Tommy John surgery to actually improve/enhance their performance… loved the back and forth!! Phenomenal interaction

These two guys should have a weekly one-hour talk show so that we can have best knowledge of cutting-edge psychology and human behavior. Two of today’s smart people!

Grant sounds condescending throughout, I listened to his Podcast "WorkLife" but don't know why he comes across like this in this interview, it's a mystery

1:03:00 Feedback is an interesting topic. From the gaming world, there's a lot of parallels between the two. People often give the wrong kindof feedback in the gaming world. They give proscriptive feedback rather than their actual experience. Instead of saying "I didn't understand where I needed to go at point X", they'll say "Devs need to add more markers for getting to point X". It sounds similar, but its a world apart.

Malcolm should be interviewed by professor Jordan Peterson. I think they’d be surprised by how much they have in common. Of course you can’t be certain when you speak all the time. Sometimes you’re asking questions with your statements. That’s why we need free speech. To understand, we need to speak first

Great discussion, thank you! Your conversation was a joy to spectate. As an interviewer Adam Grant was mostly right on the mark but fell into uncool snark and sarcasm a few times. It lessened the quality of your discussion and made Mr. Grant appear inferior.

Regarding the intelligence debate, how do we define intelligence, then how do we measure it? How many pupils fail at school while being very intelligent because of their backgrounds (or other reasons)? I am sure Malcolm overlooked the importance of intelligence, but focusing too much on intelligence (while it is so illusive) can end up in self-fulfilling prophecies. People are more obsessed with intelligence than with hard word work. Also, hard work alone is not enough, deliberate practice (not any practice) and relevant feedback are very important.

Is anyone familiar with the recently released book Everyone is an Einstein; and There is an Einstein in Everyone: The Constitution of Genius by author Benjamin Michael? It's a very compelling read!

Babysitter interaction is a generational thing. Kids of past generations did not need to be entertained constantly. Good natured and entertaining responses make this work.

This is so good.

BLINK is basically about the Alexander Technique.

Nice informative video

As an alumni of Penn, I would like to politely request this host never be allowed on the internet in video form again. Although he does finally settle down the longer the interview goes on.

On the topic of MG’s dismissal of Jonathan Haidth on his dislike for political correctness and trigger warnings (and cancel culture)... MG does not get Jonathan Haith at all!!! As a mother of 4 young adults, while it is true that it is wonderful if Parents can inculcate ‘kindness’ by being concerned about other peoples feelings, CANCELLING people who ‘hurt’ your feelings is totally a different matter! MG totally misrepresented Jonathan Haidth’s point altogether. As a parent, many times being ‘kind’ means telling my kids things that WILL upset and maybe even HURT their feelings! Many times being ‘kind’ means i will have to say NO that will upset them. Being ‘kind’ should NOT be mistaken for being ‘nice’ all the time. This is the same with life. In the real world, your feelings does not matter at all! If your professors over trained their students to focus on their feelings rather than objective critical thinking, these overly ‘nice’ focused professors will deter the maturity of these students! Though i love a lot of MG’s work, this point is definitely NOT well thought out. I hope MG will discuss this issue further hopefully with Jonathan Haidth so that MG can at the very least properly steel man JH’s arguments.

Why does Gladwell find it so surprising that individuals become outraged with an individual's isolated behaviors but not complex social and governmental forces? Everyone is posting and responding to their own and other's individual actions. It is really difficult to look at a community's or a culture's problems when you are spending time posting your latest meal or reacting to another's comment.

I don't think the interviewer has the best technique to get the best out of Malcolm. I was uncomfortable for Malcolm.

Intelligence and “The Talent Code”....grit can outweigh intelligence

imagine after buying the book reading half of it... then you hear that its a better experience in your preferred medium...

To Adam's first point about how Malcolm contradicts himself. David vs Goliath is the opposite of Outliers. Outliers is about cumulative advantage and DvsG is about cumulative disadvantage. This guy is a professor a fucking Ivy League school and this is how he starts the conversation? My response would be read Tipping Point, advantage accumulates to a point and progress is made up to a point where it tips and becomes a disadvantage.

Dogs show curiosity by raising their ears and tilting their heads. This is well-known.

🖤

A truly thought provoking, entertaining talk!! Malcolm is such a good speaker and Adam such a good host!! Thank you for putting this on!!

The hard working person of average intelligence won't go as far as the lazy genius if the genius does the bare minimum of thinking. They will go much farther than a lazy person of average intelligence of course.

I love this … Harvard is hedge fund with an education unit 🤣

Gladwell trashed Havard for not admitting based on the SAT score, then he denounced the LSAT for being timed, and then the host said there was an advantage to being able to think on one's feet, and yet the host couldn't slam Gladwell on his standardized test contradiction.

I feel like Adam is a bit obnoxious, asked some good questions but other comments/questions did not contribute and detracted from the conversation.

Is there a way to mute Grant??

@41:25 "I went to University of Toronto where my GPA was a function of my reading and thinking skills" XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Actually, not a few, post-Tommy John pitchers; have come back stronger after surgery; not just, the same, Mr. Interviewer.

Interviewer is kind of rude..but in a polite way.

Only in America are there legacy given for a leg up for admission?

Great discussion

Marvelous to watch Malcolm handle this guy like a child’s toy.

Malcolm gladwell, Your conversations are very interesting, and I take such pleasure in listening to your point of view. I have a question for you, what are your thoughts on reparations for African Americans for institutionalized slavery? What are your feelings on the effects of using terms like white and black to describe people of ethnicity in a multicultural multi-ethnic world? Is there enough evidence to prove that racial unrest in America can be linked directly back to institutionalized slavery. not only that it's linked back to institutionalized slavery, but the effects of institutionalized slavery not only gave birth to Jim Crow black exploitation and much of the racial divide that is taking place today, but, incidence like George Floyd, who interestingly enough was abused by officers that consisted of a multi-racial group, is due mostly because the effects of institutionalized slavery was never effectively dealt with in America. Is the paradigm of "victim and predator" wrong? Are we all victims of the disease of racial superiority? People become outraged because of racial inconsistencies that took place 20-30 years ago. Even monuments of the Civil War are under attack in some states. Could this be a form of post traumatic stress and if so could it be directly linked to the institution of slavery and the disease of racial superiority in America? There is a large group of individuals in the African-American community that are suffering from color racism; I can't think to call it anything else except interracial discrimination. These are light skin and dark skin Americans that are being discriminated against because they're not "light" enough or "dark" enough within their selected communities. can it be said, that America was brainwashed by The practice of racial superiority, implemented because of institutionalized slavery - is that enough justification for reparations? Reparations, should not just be about a monetary settlement, but, a comprehensive look at our history and a holistic approach to healing. In conclusion, I wonder if you've done any research on this subject and I wonder would you be willing to speak publicly concerning it. Thank you for illuminating my mind and giving me interesting and positive things to challenge my thinking.

I don’t get the negative comments about the interviewer myself. Just seems to me like a friendly academic debate between two people who know each other. I really enjoyed it

interviewer ruined my experience...smh,hush Adam

This was not an easy flowing interview to get through for me. I got the vibe that this Adam dude was sort of out to be a bit cleverly rude and questioning from the get go. Kind of disrespectful in an underhanded way. Or I perhaps just misread him totally.

The idea that only "white men in their 50s" are chafing at the political and epistemic conformity - and duplicity- of the growing culture on many college campuses is deridable. For what it's worth, myself and many of my classmates going to school in California feel that Haidt has some excellent points and really doesn't go far enough. Send Malcom my way; I could teach him a thing or two.

Malcolm is right on with the LSAT. So is Adam in the speed of processing issue, its more important than running. :-) elsewhere Adam is a tad arrogant. Part of real success is modesty. D.A., J.D., NYC

Adam sounds so similar to Sean Evans. The you tuber that hosts “Hot Ones”.

*1:04:01** or students by GPA*

Why would you think that someone upset about black face would not also be very upset about voter supression? It's all the same issue: racism

What strange person would actually want to interact with their baby sitter? It seems so odd. The age disparity would preclude that. It’s a baby sitter, not a nanny.....

1:22:46 It seems like Gladwell have never been forced/shamed for using “the wrong pronoun” or spend time around college students who are deeply immersed in PC culture. He does not seem aware of the extent of problem

1:16 "Consistency is surely the lamest of all human virtues." - Gladwell

These two are a more pleasant and fun version of Buckley/Vidal.

The fact that virtually all of Gladwell‘s ideas have been debunked or seriously questioned brings the point that we need to make decisions on whether we want good stories or good science. Case in point here is that Gladwell has good stories and Grant has good science. Gladwell largely tells us a good story without regard for how true that story is. You should file his work in the fiction section of your bookshelf

The interviewer had a very point. IQ is one of THE biggest predictor of future success. It CAN be misleading for MG to disregard IQ altogether. MG should have qualified that his focus on “consciousness” as more important than IQ, is primarily for those who are in the ‘same’ range of IQ for the personality trait ‘conscientiousness’ to matter. Ex his roster of applicants are all ‘qualified’ ENOUGH but MQ is looking for the EXTRA quality of conscientiousness and perseverance to get the best applicant for him. Therefore, there are a whole lot of people who will NOT even qualify to be an applicant at all. That i think is the pount of the interviewer.

I like Gladwell, but on the issue of PC he's simply emotionally beclouded. What an extraordinarily superficial dismissal of the subject. He says that it's important for us to pay heed to other people's feelings -- except for white men over fifty, I guess. But his statement about structure being more important than anecdotes unwittingly leads us into something that he obviously doesn't want to think through.

Smart you are? Really? Intelligence is not measured equally. How do we learn if we are determining outcomes based on perceived intelligence.

On the topic of ILLEGAL Immigration and Justin Trudeau... 1) it is really quite disappointing to hear from MG a relatively ‘rich’ man who is NOT at all negatively affected by ILLEGAL Immigration like much of the ‘poor’ tax paying Citizens whose livelihoods and peace and order are very much negatively affected by ‘unsavoury’ illegal Immigrants. MG doesn’t realise how pompous and hypocritical he sounds that to be ‘nice’ to the admittedly needy illegal immigrants, he is willing for ‘the government’ ( not him personally) to accept with open arms these illegals AT THE EXPENSE of those tax paying citizens who will most be negatively affected by them. It is infuriating for MG as well as rich Hollywood, CNN MNSBC types to preach about the morality of borders while they lock up their doors every night. The doors 🚪 in our home are our actual BORDERS in a smaller unit of society. It is almost expected from the proponents of borderless society who are intellectually dishonest by locking their doors at night and not opening their homes to the needy. I am sorry for my rant, i was just very much disappointed hearing this from someone whose work i like. I truly hope he will be open enough to have an honest discussion with those who does not agree with him. 2) on the topic of justin trudeau, oh my. Where do i even start?! !

Is this an interview or a debate? Lol

Here is a contradiction; that I have most perfectly, reconciled, within the confines of my skull... .......................The Interviewer is, a perfectly unfunny/clown.

What first seemed like a real treat of a meeting between two great minds, quickly became a cringe fest of disagreeable low self-confidence vs. badgered, defensive interviewee that resulted in passive-aggressive, brute answers to jab at each other. If they're actually friends, they show little respect in this process, cutting the other's sentences and thoughts, being aggravated to defend their own stance. Just (the body language is already) brutal to watch. Excessive video games may have seriously jeopardized Adam's social skills development. If he can't develop his EQ to be a decent interviewer, someone with a strong demeanor should babysit him until he has another TedTalk.

Lasted 3 minutes. The interviewer 🤦🏽‍♀️ Sorry Malcolm.

Adam Grant... He's not the best interviewer is he... He seems kind of out of depth next to Gladwell. He reverts quite a bit to a passive aggressiveness that he seems to think is witty... It's like he's chasing Gladwell around the stage like an arrogant 7th grade boy telling his teacher how much more he knows than everybody else in the room. That said I loved "Originals," but still, he's kind of disappointing...

Adam grant annoy anyone else?

I wanted to enjoy this and learn. I live for food-for-thought. However, they EACH turned it to a game of one upmanship. So it was a waste of my time.

two things: disappointed to hear the phrase "off the reservation" come out of malcolm gladwell's mouth. does he understand what it means to first nations people, he might as well have said "off the plantation" referring to black people. regarding justin trudeau, sure it was stupid to paint his face brown, but to "brown people" it was an interesting insight into trudeau's mindset. justin trudeau betrayed his sense of privilege and superiority which will eventually manifest itself in how he governs.

Adam, you need to grow up.

24:52 'I didn't choose my intelligence, (...) it is highly inheritable...' - Ha! Darwinian determinism creeping in here. Is this politically correct?

I thoroughly dislike the interviewer,